


Bad Things Happen to Good People (Good Things Happen to Me)

by cookingwithcyanide



Category: Sonic the Hedgehog (2020)
Genre: M/M, One Night Stands, Recreational Drug Use, Robotnik Hates The Military Challenge, also some uuhhh Opinions on the american military-industrial complex, and hopefully moooorreee, and neither does the surgeon general, could go either way, fuck kierkegaard, is this an au or a prequel?, robotnik is on a lot of mescaline, stone has a dog named Toaster shes real ugly and i love her, stone has ptsd, that happen twice, thats new mexico babey!!!, the author does not recommend these coping mechanisms, theres gonna be a lot of philosophy talk ngl whoops, this is a camus household, weirdly political, who knows!, you are not immune to propoganda
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-25
Updated: 2020-03-25
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:48:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23306335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cookingwithcyanide/pseuds/cookingwithcyanide
Summary: He gets out of his car and steps before the man. He doesn’t seem surprised to see him.“Hello, Stone.” Acrid smoke curls out alongside the words, dissipating lazily in the afternoon light.“I- Hi. You never told me your name.”The man cocks his head. His eyes are clearer tonight but no less distant, no less bottomless in their intensity. He passes Stone whatever it is he’s smoking. “Dr. Ivo Robotnik."
Relationships: Dr. Eggman | Dr. Robotnik/Agent Stone
Comments: 12
Kudos: 66





	Bad Things Happen to Good People (Good Things Happen to Me)

**Author's Note:**

> Ohhh friends. I really do mean to work on the very fluffy piece I drafted out weeks ago. I just keep having New Ideas. This one came to me after shouting, as I often do, about absurdism and the daily little deaths of the worlds we inhabit to the deer and coyotes I saw on a walk through the woods. The title is from Will Wood and the Tapeworms’ Chemical Overreaction, but I think their song Everything is a Lot fits well too:
> 
> “All the moments you’ve lost, all the money it cost, all the dreams that you tossed aside/All that you feel is only real if you decide it inside./ So when you’re holding onto everything but feel you cannot, let it go, ‘cause everything is a lot.”

Stone lifts his head off the bar. The chatty guy next to him is back. He’s gone out to smoke and come back twice in the past hour or three or… however long it’s taken Stone to get through his last six beers. Each time he returns smelling a little more like gasoline and talking a little less coherently to the air over Stone’s head. It’s really throwing off his wallowing. Was it really too much to ask, to just have an uninterrupted night of getting piss-drunk after getting laid off from the job he moved a thousand  _ goddamn _ miles from home to do, away from everyone he knew? After two years of nothing but perfectly acceptable- fucking  _ commendable _ work? God, he hated outsourcing. 

At least the guy isn’t half bad looking. His eyes are unfocussed and a little glassy, but there’s something about the way he’s smiling and swaying and going on half in tongues at this point that makes Stone curious. He’s too clean-cut and tidy to be written off as some crazy desert bum, and fuck if he’s not lonely, so Stone lets the guy keep buying him beers, lead him to a booth in the back of the bar. He curls up into Stone’s side and nuzzles behind his ear, whispering indiscriminately about how the world will end in fire and flood and there will be no rapture because no one will be saved, and every debauched thing he wants to do to Stone’s body.

Stone wakes up alone in his own bed with a pounding headache and cottonmouth like he’s never had before. He groans and rolls to his feet to let out Toaster because she’s whining at the door, and dry heaves in the sink before he can stomach a bottle of water and some advil. He’s stark naked with bruises shaped like teeth making a strange, curling design on his chest. After a long, sore shower, Stone assesses his sheets. They’re a sticky mess, scattered with ashes. Stone sighs and balls them up to be washed. He shuts the window and leans his forehead against the cool glass, watching Toaster sniff at the chain link fence. Even though most of the night before is a blur, he cannot stop thinking about the man he met, his words, how he felt.

\-----

Stone tries to put the one night stand out of his mind as he hunts for a new job, but the things he said prick like briars in the back of his mind. He thinks about it when the sunset turns the river into bloody fire, when he drives past a pileup on the highway along it, when he hears the screech of metal crumpling and smells acrid burning rubber through his open windows. He thinks about it when he looks in the mirror in the morning after washing his face and he can only say with certainty that the reflection staring back is his own because it could not rationally belong to anyone else. 

Maybe a month later, Stone is on his way back from another moot interview for another menial job at another mediocre company when he sees him. He's smoking outside of a bar, different from the last one. It’s getting late and Stone wants nothing more than to go home, down a few beers, and pass out still wearing his suit with his dog at his side. But he pulls into the parking lot. He gets out of his car and steps before the man. He doesn’t seem surprised to see him.

“Hello, Stone.” Acrid smoke curls out alongside the words, dissipating lazily in the afternoon light.

“I- Hi. You never told me your name.”

The man cocks his head. His eyes are clearer tonight but no less distant, no less bottomless in their intensity. He passes Stone whatever it is he’s smoking. “Dr. Ivo Robotnik.”

Stone takes a drag. The flavor is bitter and a little plasticine, catching in his throat. He coughs. “You’re a doctor?” He means it only half as a joke; they hadn’t spoken about Robotnik’s profession when last they met, only fleetingly about Stone’s. 

Robotnik  _ hmm _ s. “Twice. In mechanical engineering and chemistry. Working on a third in electrical engineering now.” He steals the joint back from Stone and Stone slumps against the dusty concrete wall next to him.

“Shit. I barely finished my masters without throwing in the towel.” Robotnik leans up and presses his mouth to Stone’s, exhaling a slow stream of smoke. Stone barely chokes on it this time, still unaccustomed to the sharp ochre flavor.

“I’ve been told I’m  _ very _ tenacious,” Robotnik purrs in his ear.

Stone laughs, “I’m sure.” 

They pass the joint back and forth in the relative silence after that, interrupted only by the occasional peal of laughter or muffled shouting from inside the bar, until Robotnik stubs the butt out on the wall beside him. He presses into Stone’s side and bares his teeth at him with half-lidded eyes. “So,” he jerks his head toward where Stone’s truck is parked. “Wanna give me a ride home?” Not half an hour ago, Stone had wanted nothing more than to pass out alone on his couch as soon as humanly possible. He can’t quite remember why. He nods.

Robotnik sprawls out in his passenger seat, somehow managing to give off the languid air of a big cat in the sun even while gesticulating wildly as he rambles about what a fine cosmic coincidence it is that Stone came to him that night. “Only, coincidence doesn’t really exist, understand, at least not in the way that people who don’t understand coincidence think it does- take a left here. There’s no such thing as fate, unless  _ everything _ is fated, of course, but that’s bullshit. Have you read any Kierkegaard?” 

Stone shakes his head, regretting it when the world around him keeps spinning afterwards. He’s having trouble keeping track of driving and his passenger’s words at once. The road has started to rise up to meet his car in the strangest way.

“Good,” Robotnik nods approvingly. His head keeps lolling back after the action. “He was an idiot. He got so close, too, but no cigar. He couldn’t…” he gestures vaguely about himself. “He couldn’t let go.”

Stone wakes up to the blaring of an alarm that isn’t his. It takes a moment to orient himself in the bright room and something weighing down his whole right side. Then Robotnik grumbles and shifts to hide his face further in Stone’s bare chest before stretching like a cat and climbing to his feet, and the last night stutters back to him in bits and pieces.

“Sorry,” Robotnik grins down at Stone, looking anything but. “I have to get up for work.” Stone squints up at him from beneath the arm thrown over his eyes as he cracks his neck and rummages through his dresser for a pile of clothes, starts moving out of the room. “I’ll put on some coffee before I shower, okay? Help yourself to whatever in the kitchen!”

Stone finds his boxers on the floor and pulls on his undershirt, then wanders down the hall until he finds the small kitchen. The sunrise paints the walls orange as he pokes around in the fridge and cabinets. He ends up throwing together scrambled eggs with peppers that are only starting to get a little soft, and extra cholula because there’s somehow four varieties and absolutely no salt in Robotnik’s spice cabinet. He hears Robotnik pad in from the hall and jumps when he wraps his arms around Stone from behind, kissing the underside of his jaw.

“Wow, he cooks too?” Robotnik’s hair is still damp; it tickles where it brushes against Stone’s neck.

He laughs and turns in Robotnik’s arms, kissing him back. “Calm down, it’s just eggs.” 

Robotnik nips at his nose petulantly, then breaks away to get out plates and mugs. Stone takes his coffee with a little cream, and Robotnik asks for his with “an ungodly amount of sugar, please.” They sit at Robotnik’s rickety kitchen table until Stone starts to feel human again, and Robotnik tells him about his job. “I’m basically developing drone tech for the assholes in the military, so that the government can commit bigger and better war crimes. It’s dirty work, or whatever, but principles are for the well fed. And you should  _ see _ the lab space, it's incredible. Perks of all that taxpayer money.”

“Huh,” Stone swallows the last of his peppers. “I might’ve seen some of your stuff in action. I did four years in Afghanistan, ‘bout six years ago?”

To his credit, Robotnik doesn't look caught out. Rather, his sharp smile stays firmly in place. “Probably, then. Weren’t they  _ awful _ ?”

Stone shrugs. “Did a better job than we did on the ground, I guess. Like you said, bigger and better. I joined up right out of high school- it certainly wasn’t like anything I’d ever seen before.”

Robotnik scrapes his chair back and collects their plates and forks, kissing his temple on his way to the sink. “Well, your country thanks you.” Somehow, he manages to sound only a little bit sarcastic.

Stone stands to help and dries the dishes Robotnik passes him, feeling so domestic it tugs something in Stone’s chest. Once everything is back where it belongs, though, he sighs and says, “I should probably head out.”

Robotnik frowns, grabbing onto his hand. “Are you sure? I’ve got another half hour before I have to leave… can get a lot done in half an hour.” He slides his hand up Stone’s shirt. Stone leans in and kisses him, slow and sleepy, but pushes him away after a minute.

“I wish I could, but I’ve really got to let my dog out before she has her way with my rugs.” 

Before he leaves, though, Robotnik insists on putting his number in Stone’s phone while he pulls the rest of his clothes back on, “So I don’t need to wait on another coincidence to see you again, okay?” He kisses Stone goodbye at the door, like a real gentleman, except he slips his hand in Stone’s back pocket and grabs. Driving home just before the morning rush with the still-cool air coming in through his windows and a new contact under the name “Ivo (hot bar guy),” Stone realizes he feels better than he has in a long time.

**Author's Note:**

> Don't do drugs, kids, even when handsome strangers offer them to you. ESPECIALLY when handsome strangers offer them to you. Get therapy, Stone, not behind the wheel, I don't care HOW pretty he is-


End file.
